*By Julie Barrett, Founder, Conservative Ladies of Washington
We hear the word “indoctrinate” thrown around so much in our society right now, especially as it pertains to our children in government schools. In a Fox News interview, I did last June, I stated that parents need to be the ones to indoctrinate their children. Many people reached out to me, telling me that indoctrination is very bad, and I shouldn’t do that to my children.
By its very definition, indoctrinate means essentially “to teach.”
1.: to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle
2: to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments : TEACH
Indoctrination should start at home, in the family, at a young age. It is our duty and our right to indoctrinate our children in the ways that we believe they should live and view the world. The Bible even instructs parents to do this: Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it. Proverbs 22: 6
Part of the reason our children have become so susceptible to the indoctrination of the radical left that has taken over our government school system is that we, as parents, have given over that authority. Before and after school care programs have become the norm for many families. With both parents working outside the home in many cases, we have relinquished many of our traditional parental duties to our school systems. Our busy-ness has left us with little time for the traditional family activities – like family dinner each night, story time before bed, prayer, and devotions in the morning, etc.
In the meantime, the radical left in our government schools has been busy slowly and methodically taking over our parental duties for decades now. We’re seeing SEL (social emotional learning) being bent into a Critical Race Theory framework to indoctrinate our children in teaching them that they are defined by the color of their skin or their sexual identity. In doing this, the system can manipulate our children into their radical way of thinking. They are training up the youth to become activists for the causes that are near and dear to those on the left.
Regardless of your political affiliation, if you’re a parent, you likely want to be the person shaping your child’s world view. That’s your God-given right. Parents across the spectrum are seeing what is happening to our children in our government schools and are ready to take a stand and take back their rightful position in their child’s life. That means we, as parents, will need to be indoctrinating our children. It’s not a bad word. It has received a negative connotation considering everything our children are facing in the schools, but please don’t be afraid of this.
As a Christian family, we indoctrinate our children (now all teenagers and young adults) with a biblical world view. We teach our children to treat everyone with love and respect regardless of their skin color, income level, sexual identity. We teach our children that they are unique and precious and made perfect in the image of God. Our indoctrination runs contrary to what our children hear when they go out into the world. As parents we must work overtime to drown out the indoctrination that the world wants to do to our children.
Your family values may look different from ours and that’s ok. It’s your right to indoctrinate your children in your way with your values, not mine or anyone else’s. Don’t be afraid of this. Let’s let our voices and our lessons be the ones that resonate most with our children.
